Self Improvement

The Importance of Having a Morning Routine

Mornings are an amazing time to be productive. If you get up early, then you have a plethora of uninterrupted free time just waiting for you to claim. It is a wonderful time to engage in some work.

However, some of us might not set up our morning right, and this could leave us feeling worn-out by midday, in that post-noon slump that many of us get into, or simply not as productive as we otherwise could have been.

So to combat this I really advise that you devise some kind of rejuvenating morning routine, if you do not already have one.

My routine is as follows:

If I’m not being lazy and I get up early, I’ll exercise for 20 minutes.

I used to do half an hour’s worth of bodyweight exercises and run once a week. It helped me maintain a toned physique. Recently, I have started going to the gym and lifting weights. Whatever physical exercise works for you, make sure to do it! Exercise has many benefits – it can boost your immune system, improve depression symptoms, and help lower risk of getting a variety of diseases.

Do enough physical exercise and you will begin to experience the release of endorphins (the feel good chemicals) in your brain. In my opinion running is worth it for the runner’s high alone. It gives an amazing sense of achievement that actually means something, unlike our culture of meaningless instant gratification accolades.

Then I’ll grab my towel and head to the bathroom for a very refreshing cold shower.

Cold showers are an amazing way to give you a completely natural and healthy energy boost in the morning. There are many benefits to cold showers, check out the blog post I wrote at my other site here.

After the shower I head back to my room for some quiet meditation

I really love meditating in the morning. It brings me very serene and fresh feelings that I can’t really replicate by meditating at another time of day. It gets your thoughts together for the day ahead, and puts you in a calm state so that you’re less likely to feel stressed.

Journaling

Journaling started out as pretty random for me. I wasn’t in such a great place, and I read somewhere that journaling could help with that, so I just started doing it. I write at least 750 words every single day, at a site aptly called www.750words.com. I don’t always hit every single day, but I’ve been doing it for over a year now and have written over 600,000 words. That’s equivalent to roughly 8 novels!

It’s an amazing way to go about planning your day, and getting your thoughts in order – a kind of ‘brain-dump’ where you can throw all your worries, stresses at the moment and leave them there. I also use it to track anything from my mood to sleep quality.

Anything goes, it’s unfiltered; it’s stream of consciousness style writing that will give you a feeling of release afterwards, which is why I love it.

After journaling I like to read a good book for at least 30 minutes.

Reading, as I’ve come to realize significantly over the last few years, is actually quite important, because getting knowledge and experience from other people is invaluable.

If you like to read novels, then feel free to take pleasure in transporting yourself to another world for half an hour a day. If it’s a design and architecture book you’re reading, fantastic! Reading is something that can greatly benefit you, so read whatever you are captivated by. You instantly become more interesting, because you can relate things that you’ve read to your environment, and bring up a variety of topics in conversation.

So there you have it. This is my morning routine, and I hope this inspired you to take up something I described. However, this is just unique to me. Create your own routine that suits you, really customize it and choose activities that take under 2 hours to do that give you clarity, peace and focus.